while violating International Law_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.

'Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade.

Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.'_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

'On March 8th, 19 year old Azhar Ahmed posted a comment on his Facebook page about the deaths of 6 British soldiers in Afghanistan on the 6th March. On the same day as Azhar's post, a Facebook group entitled Azhar Ahmed Scumbag!!! was created (with large Union Jack flag as its logo) and, someone (perhaps the creator of the FB page) reported his comment to the police. The following day, Friday, Azhar was arrested and charged over the weekend. He was then released on bail and will appear in Dewsbury magistrates' court on March 20th. An online petition has also been created that demands that Azhar be "sent to prison for hate crimes against British soldiers".'_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

'Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm (See: who owns Facebook). “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”

All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the “smart home”, you’d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.

The CIA has a lot of legal restrictions against spying on American citizens. But collecting ambient geolocation data from devices is a grayer area, especially after the 2008 carve-outs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hardware manufacturers, it turns out, store a trove of geolocation data; and some legislators have grown alarmed at how easy it is for the government to track you through your phone or PlayStation.'

'''Spies will no longer have to plant bugs in your home - the rise of 'connected' gadgets controlled by apps will mean that people 'bug' their own homes, says CIA director David Petraeus. The CIA claims it will be able to 'read' these devices via the internet - and perhaps even via radio waves from outside the home.'

:: Devices connected to internet leak information

:: These gadgets will 'transform clandestine tradecraft'

:: Spies could watch thousands via supercomputers

:: People 'bug' their own homes with web-connected devices

_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

On March 16, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order entitled, “NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS.”_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

'Some of the biggest Internet service providers in America plan to adopt policies that will punish customers for copyright infringement, and one of the top trade groups in the music biz announced this week that it could begin as soon as this summer.

Photo: AFP Photo / Samantha Sin

The chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America told an audience of publishers on Wednesday that a plan carved out last year to help thwart piracy is expected to prevail and be put in place by this summer. RIAA CEO Cary Sherman was one of the guest speakers among a New York panel this week and he confirmed that, at this rate, some of the most powerful Internet providers in America should have their new policies on the books by July 12, 2012.

Last year, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cablevision Systems and other Internet service providers proposed best practice recommendations that they suggested would help curb copyright crimes on the Web. The end result largely settled on consisted of a “graduate response” approach, a plan that would mean culprits could be issued a series of warnings for illegally downloading suspect material which, after a certain number of offenses, would lead to “mitigation measures,” connection speed throttling and termination of service.'

On the one hand, I wonder if the Pentagon/DoD/NSA et al is hiring some really good science fiction writers. On the other hand, I also wonder what candidate, particularly the one who promises to remove so many of our unconstitutional elements, could have any potent effect on something that costs billions of dollars and already has broken ground, far into its construction contracts.

That pretty much goes for everything we are reading these days... all these mega corps and their money and power. Might they actually allow any human and his or her followers to disband their technological creations? Definitely not while the people are clamoring for more iPads and such. Everything you bring into your homes has some kind of tracking device. Everything you wear does as well. This is inevitable in our electronic+wireless(satellite) world. And we continue to welcome it, despite growing pockets of concern. You know, smartphones=okay, surveillance=not okay. The two are one and the same. To desire that these two be divorced from each other is laughable.

Then again, to desire all these go away would imply that one is some sort of Luddite.

The comforts of man continue to progress and we are moving way too fast to see the forest from the trees... no amount of dissent about it is going to amend technology to some benevolence-only phenomenon. (Not while humans are involved, anyway.)

I suppose if an alternate technology of communications comes along that doesn't involve the military and multi-national commerce, we may free ourselves from this while not going completely back into the caves... how realistic that is, I don't know. What entity would allow it? How long before it too becomes corrupt and paranoid of itself?

red

ps - trying to get everyone on the same ethical plane of thinking probably requires force. this is the true dichotomy._________________just cos things are fucked up doesn't mean it isn't progress...

Everything you bring into your homes has some kind of tracking device. Everything you wear does as well. This is inevitable in our electronic+wireless(satellite) world. And we continue to welcome it, despite growing pockets of concern. You know, smartphones=okay, surveillance=not okay. The two are one and the same. To desire that these two be divorced from each other is laughable.

Yep, Red, you got their number. I used to be a CTO of Wireless Startup (sold to Nokia), never own a cell phone since.

well, sadly i do own these fucking gadgets... but to feel like my privacy is being intruded upon is not rational thinking if i understand even slightly what the technology is all about.

need i worry what "big brother" sees me doing? prolly not, since it would be stupid to even suggest any useful remedy when people are being spied upon. (not that there is a remedy...) i'm sure they are used to seeing people discussing this-and-that with great intellectual prowess. maybe those pockets of genius are just stolen, anyway.

here's another thing: whaling was big over a century ago. but just as the whale population dwindled to nothing, along came oil.

the bigger problem for planet earth is overpopulation and resources becoming dirty, spoiled, etc, amassing huge wealth for a small percentage of humans who are already calling all the shots.

on the other hand, 7 billion people calling all the shots may not be a good alternative. many of them may be all right with just going with the flow... so long as they get to eat and fuck. what about the many who think they know better than the next guy?